The lore and importance behind "art styles"

[Ranger Intel]

The Halo 4/5 art styles are really just different species (or "ethnicities") of alien races being depicted. This is made clear in the Kilo-five trilogy, the appearance of most Elites, Jackals, and Grunts is canon. Some are clearly not, such as the Arbiter's, and this is due to resource limits. The reason both species aren't shows is because of time constraints, and resources. The ultimate solution is to have all species shown, and this may well be possible for Halo 6.

 

If 343 can show all species, or at least the ones that should be there by canon, Halo 6 will be almost perfect already. Of course there are many things that can be improved/developed, but the appearances in-game and in cutscenes are too important to be sacrificed. Halo's most important aspect, in many people's opinions, is its lore. 343 have done an outstanding job with Halo Wars 2. They show both the original species from "Bungie's" Halos, and the "343" species. This is what all future Halo titles need. It makes sense, and breaks no canon or lore. Why would there only be all of one species in a specific military? There would be a mix, like we see in Halo Wars 2. For the Covenant, the only "mix" we see is with grunts, and that's perfectly fine. It could make sense that all of Let Volir's crew was full of were the Halo CE/2/3/Reach species shown. We can safely assume that there were some Halo 4/5 species during the older games as well, just not depicted. The Arbiter, Thel Vadam, certainly needs his real appearance back in all future titles, but all the rest (not previously confirmed Elites) can be mixed. The Kig-Yar have 3 different species confirmed, with names. The Sangheili don't need different species names, they're not that different and wouldn't distinguish each other in that way. They Unggoy, I can't say, would love to see some more differentiation between the Halo 4/5 ones and those prior though.

 

The reason we may see 343 succeed in this area with Halo 6 is because of the time spent on Halo 6's development; clearly a lot longer. It will most likely drop in 2019 or 2020, and will be a huge success in the eyes of it's followers if 343 mix these styles together. They could be working on it right now as you read this. It will revive the dead horse everyone keeps kicking, and grow it from a colt to a stallion. This will be even better than before, because we see things how they really are, with all species (or the ones which are meant to be there canonically) involved. If 343 don't do this, it would be very disappointing, and more hope would be lost. I'm confident they know what to do now, and have known for the past 2 years. Halo Wars 2 has reassured me, and I hope to see both styles in future titles. Bringing back the old and getting rid of the new is not the way to do it. That will only make it worse, it won't make much sense, and completely get rid of newly introduced species (which have canonically been there from the start). We need both, and I put my faith in 343 to not fail us.

[Guts]

I agree that adding new species will be a brilliant addition to the next games. It would be nice to see new species make their debut or mix them all in together.

 

More development time will definitely benefit Halo 6. It can only make it a higher quality game. Although instead of focusing on lore, the more glaring issue of the discontented fans has to be addressed more urgently than this.